school composting

Happy New Year!

Let’s start with local news…. WSB has started 2013 on good note. Our indoor bokashi composting program has been launch. We now have composting stations at the end of the 1st and 2nd floor hallways. Over the course of the week the students collect their food waste into a clear, airtight container kept in their respective classrooms. Once it’s full the designated students bring it to the bokashi composters for fermentation. The 5th & 6th graders will be servicing the composters once every 2 weeks. Bokashi composting is a rapid process that utilizes microorganisms to breakdown the material. In just under 1 month we are able to use it in the garden! The best part is that it’s easy to do and keep indoors. The fermentation process is anaerobic — so no smell and no fruit flies. The students and I will be making the bokashi mixture from scratch; and I will be experimenting with actually making bokashi composters with the students in the near future. All this means that parents will be able to commission their student’s class to make them one! And they will even be able to buy the microbial mixture from WSB’s store. All the proceeds will help us grow our garden in the spring! (Back on the topic of clear, airtight containers…. We need more! If you have any you’re not using please donate them to us. Big, clear pretzel containers work great!)

In international news, our KIVA initiative has been growing steadily. In just 3 weeks time our Waldorf International Community sprouted 7 members and has $275 out in loans to people in need. Just today, WSB was able to lend another $25; this time to Haydar, a 30 year old blacksmith in Iraq — thank you, Sarah, for joining our team and making this additional loan possible! WSB has now lent $100 to people all over the world. Please consider joining us in our efforts to help eradicate poverty. KIVA is an online micro-lending organization — you can read more about WSB’s involvement (and how you can join) in the blog post previous to this one.

More fun stuff…. Over the holiday break, the garlic cloves the 3rd grade planted in our garden has sent shoots up to greet the winter sun! By next summer we should have about 20 yummy bulbs! Wanna come by for a salad or perhaps some pizza?

Ok… I’m going to cut this post off now. I got to get outside to turn some compost. I’ll be writing more later this week. I got some information about getting your house running on wind-turbine energy that you may find interesting.

Good Luck to You and Yours in 2013!
Michel

Composting and recycling can be confusing. For instance, did you know you can compost used paper plates, toothpicks, napkins, and tea bags? Or that you can compost close to 25% of your household’s waste? A great list of 75 Things You Can Compost, But Thought You Couldn’t can be found by clicking on the photo above — please check it out.

Now some may not find the photograph of trash bags below very appealing, but what if I were to tell you that those bags are full of compostable material? . . . and that we were able to compost close to everything during our Holiday Fair? If you were there you may have noticed that we didn’t even have a landfill trash receptacle present . . . well that was because everything we used this year was compostable — from the forks to the cups. Everything. So I’d like to send out a big THANK YOU to everyone that helped reduce the carbon footprint of our Holiday Fair . . . it’s good to know that the waste from our celebration will be turned into fertile soil rather than sitting in a landfill.